beautiful institutions going. we have to have that imagination to get people involved to fund and support it. you have some of the most beautiful things you can see and touch and feel. i am happy to be here and i also want to celebrate because this is a moment, the first time we have been together here as well. at the garden. -- t garden -- tea garden. i want to welcome you here as well. and congratulate all of us for working so closely together and certainly our relationships are valuable. this is one of those reasons why not too many other consular general offices -- it is country

to country and people to people. the council general and staff has offered yet another the supporting symbol of the relationship, the planting of cherry blossom trees throughout our city. we had awe have been celebratine cherry blossom festival. they are very peaceful, a relationship that we keep in mind always and we have done so for over 100 years. since the cherry blossoms are arrived as a gift to washington d.c. while we have gone for many years of that relationship, it is a requirement to know the san

francisco enjoys 55 years of that relationship, many members of the district-city community here today to enjoy that. a member of the chamber of commerce is here to enjoy that as well. we have this relationship with you because we know san francisco's international status does not stop simply at having the offices here. we are out there working on everything from cultural exchanges, student exchanges, constant communication. more and more, examining opportunities to keep livelihood. both of our countries the more trade and communication to face the challenges that are facing us. it is my great pleasure to be

here with you, counsel general, in the very beautiful garden we have here. also to know that it is in good hands with rec and park. at the same time, continue to bless it with our proclamation, our celebration of the u.s.- japan centennial on this wonderful occasion. if i may, i present to you, counsel general, are proclamation at the u.s.-japan cherry blossom centennial here in san francisco. [applause] >> thank you, mr. mayor. we have a few more introductions to mate.

our counsel general has had an experienced international career. i believe bangkok and london and seoul. no doubt san francisco is your favorite assignment. [laughter] it is not often the departments get to work so closely with the council general's office. they have done a great job planning this event with you and your staff. they have had a lot of fun doing it. there is a great report between our offices and our staff. it has been delightful. >> thank you. i did not know that you were such a good mp. i am pleased to be here. at the tea garden. i want to thank mayor lee.

as always, for your support. also, creating a park. we are here for the planting. cherry trees are near and dear to the hearts of japanese people. japanese people curate cherry blossoms each year. there are festivals to stick together with family and friends. i am sure most of you have enjoyed the cherry blossom --

the cherry blossom festival the past weekends. we are planting one treat today here and two more. these trees symbolize, are part avail long legacy. also obama these trees -- also, these trees, since 1912, we have donated them. planting these trees all over the united states. thank you again for coming. i hope this tree, the cherry

tree, will further blossom in the years to come. 6 trees we have planted in the square. and nine trees in golden gate park. still more in san francisco. more than 150 years of history of cultural exchange. this is really a great place. i cannot think of a more fitting location to plant a tree. thank you for coming and i hope you will enjoy it. [applause] >> one other short, special ceremony that i want to acknowledge. we're joined by our fire chief.

we are joined by our director of public works. we are joined by our director of the department of the environment. human rights commissioners -- we are joined by the state department. i do nothing we have ever met. we do -- i do not think we have ever met. our human rights commissioner is here. and our school board is here. john from our city administrator's office. also, john from the park's alliance, who has been a great story of this site. -- steward of this site.

we have a number of staff. the chief gardners of this area have played a significant role. and the supervisor is here. why don't you come up here and make a brief presentation? >> i do not want to take any more time, but in recognition of this dedication and your work, we will keep this mutual garden. i would like to present this commendation to the three of you. this is written in japanese. the council general's office extends its deepest respect for

your achievements and contributing to mutual understanding. >> thank you. >> that is not what it says here. [laughter] >> thank you very much. [applause] this is for you. thank you. [applause] >> if you are with me, i wanted to ask for the golden gate park crew is very tight. we have gardners assigned to the concourse area. in the last couple of months, we lost one of our beloved gardner's who loved this place, incredibly special.

i would ask that we take a brief moment of silence for carter. thank you. ok. let's plant the tree, shall we? i will do the heavy lifting. [laughter] >> turnaround and face up. i am sorry. >> good advice. >> 1, 2, 3. mr. mayor, mr. coughlin general, if you could -- mr. counsel general, if you could -- >> yay! [applause]

>> i wanted to make sure that we recognize carol. thank you for your incredible stewardship of the gift shop and teahouse. thank you all for joining us. i encourage you to patrons are beautiful gift shop why you are here. otherwise, enjoy our incredible part. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you, everybody. >> thank you for all joining us tonight. i am the good government policy

director here at spur but it is my distinct pleasure to welcome such an amazing panel tonight, as well as the mayor of our fine city. this is the innovation mayor, mayor ed lee. [applause] >> thank you, everyone. can everybody hear me? welcome. welcome to spur. i always enjoy being here. because every time i come here, some part of my brain gets woken up pet. earlier i had a wonderful opportunity to exchange with our panel members about what they're doing and how they're doing it. there is one great theme. i think these panel members are here as part of their own entrepreneurial spirit. they own companies, but they love the city as well. they know the spirit of the city. it is one of innovation. one that invites people and their views enmeshes it up with

old tradition to see if we can make an even better san francisco. my fellow collaborator, president david chiu, is here tonight. scott wiener. we have two other supervisors who may be coming later. supervisor jane kim and supervisor mar farrell, who might join us later. we're all part of the initial group of policy makers at city hall who want to hear ideas and views of this new economy, this collaborative consumption economy, a shared economy, one that we are very interested in because it has assets that have already peaked our interest. about our -- piqued our interest. about our environment, about how to do less with more, how to make an expensive city more affordable to more people. how to utilize the strength of the city as a great tourist city that maybe not that affordable to too many people and how we can get more folks to come and experience the wonder of the city.

and then hopefully they make their stake here. these panel members of decided to make their stake here. they risk reputation, may be small amounts of money, because of the had a lot of money, they may not have had to start this. but they have also, i think, done it for the right reasons. they want to experience this city in a very different way, but one that i think is in the tradition of san francisco and is reflective of mind, welcoming more people here to share in this economy. and hopefully for the right reasons, we create more jobs, get more entrepreneurs involved in the success and richness of this city. i have often said this city can be the city for the 100%. that is, everybody can have a chance to fulfil their dreams and make sure they can have a stable economy for themselves and for their families. i think we're on the verge of discussing things that would invite other members of our city

family, our department heads of that work in the tax section or in planning or in land use, to be involved with a discussion, an ongoing discussion that would potentially invite an open up our economy and modernize it even further. i think we're at a task where, quite frankly, a year ago, for example, david chiu and i do not know the outcome might be except that we were in fear that a company called twitter might leave our city and that thousands of jobs will leave us behind. so we took a little risk and suggested that we might be able to revamp our tax code for the benefit of job creation. and little did we know a year later that that invitation has caused over 125 companies to locate themselves in our city, creating thousands of more jobs, creating an ad as mayor -- an atmosphere and environment that will welcome the new technology

and innovation. to reinforce what we have been saying, and i think it is real. we are the innovation capital of the world. with your help and with your involvement. we would like to have the rest of the city catch up and be part of it as well. and we think we can have that conversation at city hall, but we will need your help. we will need you to represent the new industries as these companies are here today to keep the dialogue and that collaboration at a high level. it is the ongoing dialogue, just like the one we are leading already about a new tax structure for this city that does not punish the inventiveness that we want to have in the city. so i would like to just open with that introduction. welcome all of you here. i think you are going to see and hear an exciting introduction of all these new companies in the discussions we have. but they are going to raise questions that we do not have the answers yet.

but i do believe we have the spirit in this city to welcome solutions with your involvement. we will have the ability to do this online as well as in these forums, and i will be part of this ongoing discussion. because i want to see all of you interact with the city and make sure to is reflective of what you believe the city to be. an open society, one that is inviting to new ideas, and one that our of policy-makers along with the mayor can engage with you. thank you for being here. and thank you to spur again. [applause] >> thank you, mr. mayor. i think we're going to hear from supervisors scott wiener. >> thank you. this turnout, i think, shows a significant this is to the future of the city. we were with a smaller group right before this. one thing that i stress and i

will stress to you is that san francisco is a city that -- sort of, we haven't economy going on where we are in many ways to cut -- we have a dichotomy going on. in many ways, we are cutting edge technology and are really ahead of the curve. we attract a lot of people here, like you, in think our forward- thinking and want to try to do things in a different and more innovative way. we're also a really old school city. and change here is really challenging. for those of us at city hall, and david chiu and i talked about this a lot, when we're trying to do things differently, you can get a lot of reflexive push back, whether you're talking about putting cars sharing on the streets or whether you're talking about changing the zoning to be able to create new types of housing to make the city a little bit more affordable and inclusive. you have those kinds of

difficult conversations. so much of this is about really educating the city as a whole, from all generations, from all perspectives, that where we are going right now in san francisco, in a lot of ways in terms of our transportation system and housing policies, is not always very sustainable. and if we want is to be sustainable, if we want to remain a cutting edge and diverse city that draws all sorts of people here, we're going to have to change. we are going to have to consider new ways of doing things that maybe a year or two ago we were not even comfortable thinking about. so there is a big education process that has to occur, and i know we're all going to work together to make sure that that happens. i know we can move in the right direction. i look forward to that work. thank you. [applause] >> in rounding out our trifecta, which underscores the importance of what we are talking about, is

our very own board of supervisors president, david chiu. [applause] >> good evening. if you are like me, you did not come here tonight to hear from elected officials. i look forward to hearing from these innovators in a moment. i wanted to join my colleagues in ensuring all of you, our current generation of entrepreneurs, that we're looking forward to working with your hand-in-hand to figure out how we create san francisco not just as the capital of innovation that the capital of a sharing economy. i say this as someone who, for nine years before i joined the board of supervisors, i actually started what was a web 1.0 company. what makes our city special is everyone of you have ideas that will not only change our city but will truly change our world. our mayor is responsible for managing the 50 + executive- branch departments that will be interfacing with many of the substantive policy areas that you and i.

my colleague scott and i along with my nine other colleagues, we are responsible for legislating and figuring out how we, as a city, addax -- adapt to the new technologies are coming out with. changing the way we all live, as "time" magazine said recently. one thing we say is city hall, as those san francisco, often times so goes the rest of the country. and as goes the rest of the country, so goes the world. and i really believe we're starting sending very special today that is going to do that for our entire planet. thank you very much for being here. looking forward to working with you. [applause] ♪ hi

>> we are very pleased to be meeting here in san francisco. in this facility is named after a distinguished member of the california senate. it is our great honor that the mayor of san francisco is here to address us great mr. mayor, thank you so much from taking time -- is here to address us. mr. mayor, thank you so much for taking time. >> welcome to san francisco. thank you for meeting here. the northern california mlu that you have before you charts ecorse of our caltrain -- charts

a course of our caltrain corridor. i just want to give the nod to the empty seat -- mtc for putting this together. in san francisco, we consider caltrain to be the transit spine that connects the city to san jose and san francisco to silicon valley and all of our partner cities. caltrain electrification has had a broad regional support for many years. caltrain is the most important thing we can do for generations to come. here in san francisco, i am working hard to make sure we continue to be the innovation capital of the world. cities across this country and other nations are looking at its cities for solutions to

everyday problems. transit is our number one concern because we are a growing economy. we cannot increase roadways and airport runways there. that will not be a part of solutions for the future. you have a good solution. it is going to be affordable, it will be faster, and it will be better. i want to welcome you. as i came here this morning, i ran into a lot of great people. i know they represent a lot of generations of people. i hope, as i think many of you do, i hope to see the trains pulled through all the way from

los angeles to our valley, through our peninsula all the way to our transbay terminal. thank you very much. >> thank you, mayor. [applause] i also want to recognize, i appreciated the way you and your staff reached out to ensure that our business plan we are looking at today fully incorporates the service all the way to the terminal. and does not push that to the back of the line. we have tried to embrace that. you certainly have represented the people of discriminative very well. we have tried to listen to that. >> i do not regard myself as

simply the mayor of san francisco. i want to be a mayor that works with all the cities that are also concerned about the way we do this. we will exhibit our collaboration with them. >> thank you. >>